Shock Jocks, Hate Speech and an O'Reilly Ambush

After Jenna Kern, a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church, decided to write an Op-Ed piece for Newsday questioning whether shock jocks and hate speech contributed to the recent murderous shooting spree in a U-U church in Tennessee, the haters started to come after her as well.

The attacks started first in the comments section of Newsday...("Hi Rory. Guess what?" Ms. Kern emailed. "Newsday has received 3,000 emails against my piece. The online forum comments at newsday.com have been 99% hateful... I actually had someone sitting in a car outside my house for a half hour. I got so freaked I called the cops!")

The hate then continued on the Newsbusters site, a project of the Media Research Center -- "the leader in documenting, exposing and neutralizing liberal media bias." (Kern reports, "Wow, the blogs have gone crazy about the story I did. How did you handle all the nasty things! I don't have the stomach for it, I'm afraid.")

Media Research Center President L. Brent Bozell sent a letter to Newsday Publisher Tim Knight demanding an apology for Kern's opinion piece, and insisted that she "never again appear on the pages of Newsday," stating that her article "was absolutely despicable " and the newspaper "should be ashamed and embarrassed for having printed it..." since it was "nothing more than an in-print character assassination of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly, a foray into absurd Leftist delusions of links between them and the vile murderer in a Tennessee church this past July 27.

"This is not a freedom of speech issue," Bozell concluded. "This is Newsday giving this woman a license to assault these fine men in print, accusing them of complicity in murder. Newsday should immediately publish a full retraction, and an abject and absolute apology to those defamed by this woman's wretched words."

Finally, Kern was confronted in her own driveway, as her most recent email explains: "Bill O'Reilly's people ambushed me in my driveway today. With camera and microphone. I guess I'll be on the show tonight or tomorrow. This is not what I had wanted. Yikes. Wish me luck. I don't feel bad about anything I said, but he'll probably edit it to make me look like an idiot."

But before Billo had a chance to air his ambush, his cable nemesis Keith Olbermann scooped him on it on his MSBNC program...and declared O'Reilly again to be the "Worst Person in the World." I couldn't agree more!